Goals: Deep Impact's primary mission was to deliver a special impactor spacecraft into the path of comet Tempel 1. After its successful impact mission, Deep impact was sent on an extended mission of another comet flyby, observations around planets orbiting other stars and a space-based observatory to study targets of opportunity with its telescopes and instruments.

Accomplishments: Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the Universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us. For example, Sun glints off Earth's oceans could guide scientists to spot alien oceans (and potentially habitable alien worlds).